Another primary election has been marred by voting technology failures. As usual, election officials were quick to defend the technology and the integrity of election results, eagerly dismissing any concerns. According to an Associated Press article problems with Alaska's Diebold TSx touchscreen voting machines forced elections officials to hand count and manually upload vote totals from several precincts across the state. Touchscreen machines in Kodiak, Nenana, Healy, Tok, and Unalakleet counties were unable to upload their vote totals to the Division of Elections' central computing system.

Division of Elections Director and former Mrs. Alaska Whitney Brewster (pictured at right) noted "just because they're not being uploaded doesn't mean they're not being recorded accurately." Of course there is no reason to assume that they were recorded accurately either.

State Democratic Party spokeswoman and former state representative Kay Brown was quoted in an Ars Tecnica post "there are many systematic problems with Diebold machines that have been identified in many contexts," and feels that the occurence of "technical glitches with the machines is not surprising." Brown has been a vocal critic of Diebold's technology since a 2004 election in which a catastrophic hardware malfunction caused the company's machines to miscount votes and report inexplicable 200 percent voter turnout in just under half of Alaska's House districts.

Brown has written several articles criticizing Diebold, including one posted earlier this month on VoteTrustUSA in which she observed that Diebold's hardware may have been certified fraudulently, and is therefore illegal according to Alaska state law.

While Brewster was defending her machines Brown pointed out that the slowdown caused by the touchscreen machines is indicative of larger problems with the machines. “I can say there are many systematic problems with Diebold machines that have been identified in many contexts. That there were technical glitches with the machines is not surprising, and it’s one indication of the kinds of things that can go wrong with the machines and it’s something to be concerned about.”